Paper and Leather

Paper and Leather

It is normal for a conservation workshop specializing in items made of paper to receive books, documents, watercolour paintings and drawings, but a globe is a very rare and demanding challenge for a conservator-restorer. Here is a brief history and a structural presentation of the globe, and an overview of all the phases of conservation interventions on the Terrestrial Globe (1835) and the Celestial Globe (1770) by Robert de Vaugondy, geographer to Louis XV, kept in the library of the Franciscan Monastery of Friars Minor in Dubrovnik.

A valuable print by a 17th-c. artist, unidentified at the time, was discovered accidentally in the monastery of St. Francis in Split. The artefact was in very poor condition, which called for urgent conservation intervention. Although this motif is frequent within the Franciscan iconography, the discovered print is a significant contribution to its artistic heritage, given its unusually large dimensions; it was actually composed of several print sheets. Such a composition demanded certain adjustments to the conservation treatment carried out by experts of the Croatian Conservation Institute in 2007. Subsequent art-history processing attributed the print to the Italian master Giovanni Battista Bonacini.

The "great forgery" of the Ohmučević Family Tree, dating from the 16th c., which, according to some historians, marks the beginning of Illyrian heraldry, has been conserved in the Croatian Conservation Institute. The document was written on a sheet of paper which was attached – rather significantly – to the back of a 15th c. painting by Lovro Dobričević, depicting the Bosnian king in the persona of a donor. When received by our workshop, the condition of the Family Tree was very poor. Demanding conservation procedures have been used to separate the document from the wooden base of the painting, and then restore and protect it.